Honolulu is not the unhurried city it once was. Its increasingly stress-ridden residents endure more crowds and traffic congestion, and are likely to see episodes like the recent "Carmageddon" of rush-hour gridlock more frequently in the years ahead.
That’s because the island’s skeletal network of freeways and surface streets is bearing up with much more traffic than it was designed to handle, even when everything works perfectly. Of course, this time the breakdown of the ZipMobile system that sets up the morning ZipperLane contraflow was a colossal example of a misfire.
Such things should be anticipated, but they weren’t. It was unconscionable that there was so little redundancy in such an essential element of the freeway infrastructure. The state Department of Transportation must develop better contingencies for ZipMobile upkeep, including having extra battery packs and other parts, as well as at least two fully functioning ZipMobile systems. It’s an investment, but an essential one.
That shortcoming was, by far, the principal problem here, but the lack of in-state repair expertise compounded it, compelling the DOT to fly in a technician. This is how a backwater community handles its maintenance needs, not a city that expects to be taken seriously as a modern business hub with a sophisticated transportation network.
Moreover, the lack of planning exacerbated the problems. The entire island was witness to the inevitable result.
This simply can’t be tolerated. A full and immediate assessment of the massive failure by both city and state agencies is in order.
This disaster demands more than the abject apologies that were murmured in the aftermath. It was much worse than mere inconvenience. Routines were upheaved, appointments were missed, productivity slowed to a crawl. Such logjams present a barrier to emergency vehicles that puts lives at risk.
In the aftermath of the initial Tuesday transportation nightmare, city officials belatedly unveiled some coping strategies. The fact that they did so a day late, however, demonstrated their failure to anticipate, or even to grasp, Oahu’s true traffic conditions.
For example: In a postmortem news conference, police acknowledged they didn’t realize how bad Tuesday’s situation would be and went ahead with a scheduled enforcement crackdown on cell-phone violations, ticketing motorists on Waimano Home Road in Pearl City.
It’s the job of police, in tandem with other government agencies, to expect such problems and to redeploy officers where they would have been more useful: directing traffic through the clogged intersections that can lead to gridlock.
But that didn’t happen, and impatient drivers, many of them stuck on downtown side streets for an hour or more before even reaching the freeway, blocked cross streets between traffic cycles, making the problems much worse.
Improvement begins with Honolulu motorists. If they’re going to survive the years of rail construction and other roadwork delays ahead, drivers have to observe a much more responsible protocol in traffic.
Most of the responsibility going forward lies in transportation planning and coordination across government agencies. It was good to hear the initial response by state and city executives did include flexible work scheduling adjustments, better synchronization of traffic lights on key routes and the dispatch of more officers to help with traffic.
The postponement of roadwork projects, while necessary, underscores what a costly and avoidable dysfunction this represents.
This week’s experience recalled the 2006 meltdown when an oversized Army truck damaged a pedestrian overpass in Aiea, backing up traffic for hours. Such an episode may be extreme, but it’s not to be dismissed as a one-off. Honolulu is headed for more traffic headaches, and public officials had better be ready with more than an aspirin.
